VOTING WITH THEIR FEET: DO PEOPLE CHOOSE RESIDENTIAL DESTINATIONS BASED ON NATURALLY OCCURRING ADVANTAGES OR MAN-MADE ADVANTAGES OF LOCATIONS?

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Canales, K. L. (2020). VOTING WITH THEIR FEET: DO PEOPLE CHOOSE RESIDENTIAL DESTINATIONS BASED ON NATURALLY OCCURRING ADVANTAGES OR MAN-MADE ADVANTAGES OF LOCATIONS?. Unc Charlotte Electronic Theses And Dissertations.
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Abstract

Local economies benefit from attracting in-migration either as workforce or as consumers. To compete for constituents, local economies need to provide attractive tax policy and expenditure bundles. An important consideration in this regard is the relative natural advantage of some locations in terms of its climate and geographical features, among other things. In this three-paper dissertation, I explore how natural amenities affect the variations in local government public goods and how people choose their residential locations as they trade-off between natural amenities and local government public goods as they go through phases in their life cycle. In Article 1, I propose that one of the reasons locations differ in their stock of local government public goods is because of differences in existing natural amenities by testing the hypothesis that some goods are substitutes while others are complements using spatial autoregressive random effects model estimation. In Article 2, I explore how local government expenditures and population vary in two contiguous areas that are similar in all but one natural amenity using border-matching methodology to determine how local government expenditures differ between counties sharing a border within a state that have the same level of natural amenities except for one natural feature. In Article 3, I use fixed effects panel data regression to test whether age and life milestones shape preferences and budget constraints of people when they choose residential locations as they trade-off between natural amenities and local government-provided public goods. My results indicate that some natural amenities are complements to local public goods while others are substitutes. Some expenditures are not affected by natural amenities because they have to be provided regardless of what are naturally available. Moreover, age and marital status are consistent predictors of moving. Natural amenities and certain per capita tax revenue and expenditure items also affect the likelihood of moving.

Details
Author

Canales, Kristine Laura

Title

VOTING WITH THEIR FEET: DO PEOPLE CHOOSE RESIDENTIAL DESTINATIONS BASED ON NATURALLY OCCURRING ADVANTAGES OR MAN-MADE ADVANTAGES OF LOCATIONS?

Physical Description

1 online resource (139 pages) : PDF

Date

2020

Degree Granting Institution

University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Abstract

Local economies benefit from attracting in-migration either as workforce or as consumers. To compete for constituents, local economies need to provide attractive tax policy and expenditure bundles. An important consideration in this regard is the relative natural advantage of some locations in terms of its climate and geographical features, among other things. In this three-paper dissertation, I explore how natural amenities affect the variations in local government public goods and how people choose their residential locations as they trade-off between natural amenities and local government public goods as they go through phases in their life cycle. In Article 1, I propose that one of the reasons locations differ in their stock of local government public goods is because of differences in existing natural amenities by testing the hypothesis that some goods are substitutes while others are complements using spatial autoregressive random effects model estimation. In Article 2, I explore how local government expenditures and population vary in two contiguous areas that are similar in all but one natural amenity using border-matching methodology to determine how local government expenditures differ between counties sharing a border within a state that have the same level of natural amenities except for one natural feature. In Article 3, I use fixed effects panel data regression to test whether age and life milestones shape preferences and budget constraints of people when they choose residential locations as they trade-off between natural amenities and local government-provided public goods. My results indicate that some natural amenities are complements to local public goods while others are substitutes. Some expenditures are not affected by natural amenities because they have to be provided regardless of what are naturally available. Moreover, age and marital status are consistent predictors of moving. Natural amenities and certain per capita tax revenue and expenditure items also affect the likelihood of moving.

Genre

doctoral dissertations

Subjects--Topics

City planning
Government policy
Economics

Degree

Ph.D.

Keywords

Local Public Goods
Migration
Natural Amenities
Regional Development
Urban Planning

Subject Area

Public Policy

Advisor(s)

Zillante, Artie
Schulkind, Lisa

Committee Members

Zillante, Artie
Schulkind, Lisa
Nilsson, Isabelle
Leland, Suzanne

Degree Note

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 2020.

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Rights Holder Information

Copyright is held by the author unless otherwise indicated.

Identifier

Canales_uncc_0694D_12421

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.13093/etd:2102